Educational Science

House Cats Are as Big as Ping-Pong Tables (If You Count Their Hair)

Here's a mental image: The surface area of a cat, including all the fur, is roughly equivalent to the surface area of a Ping-Pong table. If you're wondering what possible value such a factoid could have, this comparison was the result of a new study examining how animals clean themselves....

Who Knew? Cats Like to Work for Their Food

News flash to cat owners: Your indoor kitty is probably profoundly bored and unchallenged by its bottomless food bowl. But it's relatively easy to spice up kitty's life with an engaging food puzzle, a new review finds. Food puzzles are contraptions that make cats work for their food. The puzzles...

If there were an Olympic event for stretching, cats would win gold. They're constantly stretching their muscles, likely for many of the same reasons that people do, experts told Live Science. The main reasons? It feels good and increases blood flow, said Andrew Cuff, a postdoctoral researcher of anatomy at...

Hair Ball! How Cats' Tongues Get Them So Clean

Cats are famous for their fastidious self-grooming, but the way their tongues are able to get them so clean has remained somewhat of a mystery. Scientists knew that feline tongues were covered in spines, and now a group of engineers has found that the teensy structures are shaped like claws...

Why the Breeding of Mutant Cats Should Be Banned (Op-Ed)

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Cats are one of the world’s favorite pets, but in our efforts to breed more attractive felines, we are metaphorically loving them to death. Like British Bulldogs and extreme...

Early Cats Traveled with Vikings and Farmers

The early origins of domesticated cats are shrouded in mystery, but a new genetic analysis suggests that felines traveled the world with farmers and Vikings. The News section of Nature reports that the broadest genetic analysis to date of ancient cats reveals two waves of cat expansion. In the first...

Photos: The Secret Lives of Borneo's Mysterious Marbled Cats

Curious cats (Image credit: A.J. Hearn and J. Ross)Little is known about Borneo's marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata), so researchers set up camera traps to get a better idea of these felines' population densities. They found more marbled cats in the undisturbed lowland forests than in disturbed lowlands and undisturbed forests...

Plague Strikes 6 Cats in Idaho

Half a dozen pet cats in Idaho were infected with plague this year, according to a new report of the cases. In May through July, veterinarians in Idaho tested 12 cats that had gotten sick, checking to see if the animals were infected with plague. Six of the tests came...

Tracking Cats from Space: Satellites Estimate Feral Ranges

How far feral cats roam can now be estimated from space, a new study finds. No, satellites haven't become so sensitive as to be able to follow the movements of individual felines. But a new study finds that the productivity of a landscape — measured by vegetation-tracking satellites — determines...

Why Are Cats Such Picky Eaters?

When Fluffy turns her nose up at the bowl of food you've placed in front of her, don't take it personally. Your seemingly high-maintenance cat has evolution to blame for her picky eating. Cats as it turns out are driven to eat foods with a preferred ratio of protein to...